Maggie's Farm

I believe that there is a spectrum of academic ability (and it is multi-dimensional, I know a couple of brilliant engineers who have a very hard time speaking their own native language let alone writing it) but the problem is: "who decides?"

Which might bring us to the point of: "OK, equal access for everyone, but if you can't hack it you're out" I don't object to that in principal, but you've merely pushed the question back a level: "who decides what it means to 'hack it' ?" In my experience, this quickly becomes an excuse for poor teaching.
A poorly taught class or program, which merely hands out passing grades to those who have already mastered the subject is indistinguishable from one in which the material is well taught but extremely challenging. Having said which, I'd say that teaching is the only profession I can think of where high failure rates are treated as a sign of excellence. A plumber who began a job by addressing the home owner: "You see those three solder joints? Look at the one on the left! Look at the one on the right! Only one of the three is going to be working when I leave here, the others will leak!" would be laughed out of business.

And then there is the problem of credentialing. We have a very sick culture where work is concerned. It has been mentioned elsewhere that young people are reluctant to take on low level jobs, that they have an "entitlement mentality". Some probably do. "Gonewiththewind" above mentions working in a gas station, great. However, in our current work climate, the hiring and promotion process is so poor and so confused that to admit you had been an auto mechanic, a pizza driver, worked on a dairy farm, did landscaping... typecasts you as a manual laborer (never mind the real skills needed to do those jobs). No wonder even those young people without the entitlement mentality are leery of that path.

It goes much further. Hiring managers and HR people are looking for purple squirrels. A year as an auto mechanic doesn't fit the exact stereotype they're looking for -- for that matter if they're looking for a php programmer they don't want someone who has a couple of years as a tech writer on their resume, or if they're looking for a network engineer for their manufacturing business, they don't want one who has been working in the financial business. (This is often actually listed in job ads in wording such as: "A demonstrated history of consistent success in network engineering in a fortune 500 manufacturing environment.")

The whole system is broken, and it is broken at the social/cultural level. Ask the average person the old chestnut with a twist: "You say people without a college degree are as good as anybody else... but would you want your daughter to marry one?"

Yes, I agree with you completely. Clearly you and I are not the average person...